Serial killings: Street life deadly for 3 homeless men

Jan. 6, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Heather Smit Rayo places candles at the site of a memorial in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, was stabbed to death on Dec 30. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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"I'm sorry papa," Julia Smit-Lozano, right, said at the site of a memorial in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, was found stabbed to death. Her sister, Heather Smit Rayo, left, is by her side. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Julia Smit-Lozano reads the Lord's prayer at the site of a memorial behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57, was found stabbed to death on Dec 30. Her sister, Heather, left, is by her side. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A photo of Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57, was placed at a memorial in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where he was found stabbed to death on December 30. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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"I did all I could to help him," Julia Smit-Lozano, left, said of her father as she and her sister placed candles at the site of a memorial in honor of Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A photo of Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57, was placed at a memorial where Smit was killed in Yorba Linda on Dec. 30. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

"I'm sorry, Papa," Julia Smit-Lozano, right, said at the site of a memorial in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, was found stabbed to death on Dec 30. Her sister, Heather Smit Rayo, left, is by her side. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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"I did all I could to help him," said Julia Smit-Lozano, left, as she and her sister lit candles at the site of a memorial in honor of their father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Heather Smit Rayo holds an old photograph of her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, his wife, Julie Hansen, and daughters Nicole, left, and Julie. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Heather Smit Rayo holds an old photograph of her father with his wife Julie Hansen, and daughters, Julia, Nicole and Heather Smit. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Paul Smit, who liked to be called "Dutch," is shown here attending a car and airplane show in Los Alamitos in October 2011. Smit was stabbed to death on Dec. 30 in Yorba Linda. PHOTO COURTESY OF JULIA SMIT-LOZANO

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Paulus "Paul" Cornelius Smit in a photo taken about 15 to 20 years ago. COURTESY OF JULIA-SMIT LOZANO

Heather Smit Rayo places candles at the site of a memorial in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library where her father, Paulus Cornelius Smit, was stabbed to death on Dec 30. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Where they died

YORBA LINDA – Bud Winters last heard from Paulus Cornelius Smit, his best friend during high school, in 1977.

Winters figured that over the years, Smit likely had gotten into trouble because of his disdain for authority, his history of run-ins with the police while a teenager and his aversion to steady employment.

But nothing could have prepared Winters for the sad, gruesome fate of his old friend, who chose a life on the streets over a steady income and stable home life.

Smit, 57, a father of three with 10 grandchildren, was found dead Dec. 30 in a stairwell behind the Yorba Linda Public Library with multiple stab wounds to his chest.

Along with two other middle-aged men – James A. McGillivray, 53, and Lloyd Middaugh, 42 – Smit is believed to have fallen victim to what police are calling a "serious, dangerous serial killer" preying on homeless people in Orange County.

The three men were found dead within five miles of each other within a span of 10 days – Dec. 21-30 – all of them slain while alone, police say.

"Because (Smit) was homeless, most people probably had written him off," says Winters, 56, of Huntington Beach. "But you can't write off feelings. At one point in my life, this guy was my best friend."

Details are beginning to emerge about the victims of the presumed serial killer. One of them was a sex offender who was close to his mother, the other an unassuming loner, and the third – Smit – was a kind of free-spirited family man who had places to stay, but apparently felt most at home on the streets.

'A DECENT, BIG GUY'

Lloyd Middaugh had two packs of cigarettes and $12 in his pocket the last time some of his friends saw him, a few nights before he died. They hadn't seen him so happy in a long time.

Middaugh was new to the streets. He had taken shelter under an overpass just a few months ago after he lost his room at a transitional-living apartment where sex offenders like him could live.

He spent his days begging for cigarettes. He spent his nights wrapped in three sweaters and a leather jacket under that overpass – and his friends are still surprised that his attacker could stab him to death through all that clothing.

Middaugh was a giant of a man, 6 feet, 4 inches tall, 300 pounds, with tattoos lacing his arms, chest and back. He had two real interests in his life, his friends said: A near-nonstop smoking habit, and regular visits with his mother in Seal Beach.

His mother, Marie, reached at her home, declined to talk about her son because of the ongoing investigation, other than to call him a "gentle giant."

Middaugh was registered as a sex offender in Orange County after a conviction for lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14, records show. He lived until recently in a threadbare apartment complex near the Santa Ana River Trail that met the strict limits on where sex offenders can live.

Friends say he violated his parole last year when he went to lunch with a friend at a Chinese restaurant that was too close to a park. He served a few months behind bars, and had lost his apartment room by the time he got out.

"There was no place for him to go," said his former roommate, Joshua Brenn. "So he stayed under that bridge right there."

Middaugh had lived in San Diego for a time, and Arizona before that, records show. He never worked, really, although he told friends a vague story about how he used to build horse wagons.

Most days, he could be found standing outside a nearby gas station, asking for cigarettes and doing his best to stay out of trouble, friends said. He talked about getting off parole, getting back into his apartment. He's had no criminal convictions in recent years, court records show.

Middaugh told his friends in the apartment complex that life on the streets was hard, that he was cold every night, despite all his clothing. He always told people not to use the Santa Ana River Trail as a bathroom – "that's my living room," he'd say.

Ken Frawley was running the trail with his dog Rufus on the morning of Dec. 28 when he saw someone lying near the Tustin Avenue bridge. He shined a flashlight on the body.

"I saw blood in his hair and a big red spot on his chest, and a big pool of blood underneath him," Frawley said. "He was obviously dead to me. He was lying on his back. He was covered in blood.

"I thought when I saw him that he had either been stabbed, shot, or his throat had been slashed, because there was so much blood on his chest."

A MAN OF FEW WORDS

James McGillivray was a quiet presence at the Placentia shopping center where he lived and died. He had been there for at least a few months; some remember him shuffling past the storefronts in the morning, offering an occasional hello, for more than a year.

He had few possessions. A sleeping bag. A backpack decorated with the children's cartoon characters Phineas and Ferb. A cap that he often wore that said "Vietnam Veteran," although he was too young to really be one.

He would carefully roll up his sleeping bag and line up his belongings against one wall when he headed out in the morning. That's what stands in people's minds now: how humble and unobtrusive he was.

"This guy never needed to be told no. He never asked," said Ray Olea, who volunteers at Charity's Closet, a thrift store at the shopping center. "I'd put him in the category of a nice guy."

He was a man of few words, and rarely spoke without first being spoken to. He got up early, rolled up his sleeping bag, and then scavenged for food or collected tossed-out bottles for change. He sometimes napped in the afternoon on the grass of a nearby park.

A few months ago, McGillivray stuck his head into a travel agency that also does taxes, and asked if it was too late to file his 2009 income taxes. Agent Jessi Lagos said no, and he promised to return with his paperwork. He never did.

He stopped by the shopping center's Videomax store a few days before he died. It was a Sunday, and football was on the store's big-screen television. McGillivray asked who was winning, watched a few downs, and then walked back out, clerk Mario Garcia said

McGillivray stayed near Placentia, where some of his family lives, court records indicate. A woman who answered the phone at his last known residence, in Placentia, declined to comment. "Honestly, we're just trying to do our best to cope," she said.

His life on the streets put McGillivray in frequent contact with police, records show. He was often cited and arrested for loitering, camping, staying in city parks after hours. He had more than a dozen citations for drinking in public since 2002, and served short prison sentences in 2006 and 2008 for burglary convictions.

"He didn't bother no one," said Sam Leigh, 17, a junior at nearby Valencia High School. He, like many other students, hang out at the shopping center after school and came to recognize – if not know – the man who lived on the sidewalk near the back.

"I don't know why someone would kill him," Leigh said. "He never did anything. He never even asked for change."

GLIMPSE OF THE KILLER

McGillivray was the first of the three victims, stabbed repeatedly as he slept on the night of Dec. 20. The attack was captured on a surveillance video that has provided police their only glimpse of the killer.

The suspect appears to be a man wearing dark clothes and a hoodie; police have released no better description. He appears to lie in wait for some time, police say, before approaching McGillivray from behind.

Law enforcement authorities in Orange County continue to hunt for a suspect, sniffing out leads with little more than a murky image of a mysterious man that is frozen on surveillance video, as well as a description of a white Toyota Corolla captured on the same video.

From 1999 to 2009, the National Coalition for the Homeless recorded 1,074 violent acts against homeless people across the country. Of those incidents, 291 victims died.

California recorded the most incidents, with 213 acts reported in the 10-year span.

From 1999 to 2009, the report showed 70 percent of homeless victims were between 40 and 60 years old – a demographic that all three Orange County victims fall within.

CALLED HIMSELF 'WANDERER'

Less than two hours before Smit was found dead, the olive-skinned father with dark, shaggy hair called his younger daughter, Heather.

He called her at around 3:10 p.m. on Dec. 30 to tell her that his bike had been stolen. He asked her for a ride, but she couldn't help him because she was preoccupied with her children.

Smit walked to the nearby home of a longtime girlfriend and borrowed one of her bikes and returned to the library, according to his oldest daughter, Julia Smit-Lozano, 32, of Anaheim.

Smit-Lozano believes that the killer then ambushed her father, whose body was found shortly before 5 p.m.

"All my innocent childhood memories are about my father," said Smit-Lozano, who was homeless for years before getting on her feet three years ago. The single mother of a 5-year-old girl now works as a sales representative for an insurance company in Long Beach.

"He was an honest and sincere soul," said Smit-Lozano, who remembers her father helping her out on elementary school projects.

Smit-Lozano's father, who is from Amsterdam, went by the nickname Dutch, but his daughters called him "Papa."

He came to California via Colorado and got into trouble in his teens, Winters said, spending a stint in Juvenile Hall on a theft-related arrest.

Smit-Lozano said that her father started living on the streets regularly in the mid-'80s, after his wife left him when Smit-Lozano was 8.

Smit, she said, at times held down odd jobs, including tow-truck driver and plumber. But he never embraced full-time work for long, she said.

"Instead of being called a 'transient,' Papa preferred the term 'wanderer,' " Smit-Lozano said. "He thought there was more nobility to that term. He also liked 'nomad,' but he thought that you had to live in the desert to be one."

Smit-Lozano said it took until her mid-teens to accept her father's lifestyle.

"Then I'd see him digging through Dumpsters and say, 'That's my father! That's Papa!'" she said.

Over the years, Smith-Lozano said her father occasionally would stay with her or at the homes of her two sisters, or with his parents or at the homes of his three siblings, but the tug of the streets would prove to be too strong.

"He would talk about how much he loved sleeping under the stars," Smit-Lozano said, "and how, sometimes, the sky looked like a blanket of stars."

Yorba Linda Public Library director Melinda Steep recalls Smit as an unassuming man who would sit and read quietly.

"We're shocked, and so saddened," Streep said.

Ozgun Tumer, a reference librarian, described Smit's personality as "sunny," and said he smiled a lot.

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